Little girl lost, little boys found in quake-hit school

BALAKOT, Pakistan, Tuesday (AFP) Little Mahmooda Gul couldn't hear the cheers Monday that greeted the arrival of the first foreign rescue team at the mountain of rubble that once was Shaheen College.

She lay dead under a piece of plastic sheeting, her skull smashed and her face twisted in terror. But residents of this earthquake-shattered town in northwestern Pakistan believe many of her classmates are still alive, trapped beneath the concrete beams and mangled metal.

And on Monday, against all odds, they took heart that help had arrived at last.

"My son is under there - I believe he is alive," said Dr Farid, who like many people in Pakistan uses only one name. "He would have heard the cheering. Maybe this will give him the courage to cling on."

Rumours that local rescuers had reached a classroom in which 30 children and their teacher were still alive had fuelled his optimism.

"They are passing them bread and juice, and keeping them alive until the French can dig them out," he said, referring to a 15-strong team of the French Civil Security team who arrived in the stricken town mid-afternoon.

"Perhaps my son is among them," Farid said, referring to his 13-year-old son Shaid. "Perhaps Allah will spare me one."

The bodies of his two other sons, one aged seven and the other nine, were lifted from the wreckage of the school, in which 250 students are still believed buried, on Monday.

"We buried them last night," said Farid, even as another cheer went up and a local rescuer emerged from a hole in the rubble holding aloft a little boy, his face grimy and his clothes torn. He was alive and smiling.

Holding the boy up high for the crowd to see and for his parents to identify, the rescuer took off his face mask - the stench of death seeping from the ruins is becoming overpowering - and broke into a large grin. The boy, startled and confused and gripping a fruit juice, was identified as Sultan.

As Sultan was carried through the huge crowds assembled on the quake-scarred hillside overlooking what is left of Balakot - very little but swathes of crushed concrete and steel - residents surged forward to touch him on the head and kiss his cheeks.

"This gives us hope," said Mohammed Farooq, whose house was destroyed in Saturday's quake. "Allah be praised," he said, he had lost no members of his family.